Typically, images of an object acquired through a microscope are limited by the field of view of the microscope used. Attempts have been made to provide a larger digital image of the object using a mosaic or a montage of smaller digital images. In order to render the mosaic image, the location of the smaller images with respect to each other and the final mosaic image must be determined.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,687,419 to Atkin describes a method in which a current image is located within a mosaic image by shifting the current image across the montage image while continuously computing the co-variance of corresponding pixels to determine a position for the current image that maximizes the co-variance.
Determination of the location of individual images that make up the mosaic image and generation of the mosaic image for rendering on a display are computationally intensive. Improvements to means of generating an interactive, accurate large mosaic representation of a microscopic landscape that is not limited by the field of view of the microscope is desirable.